


Faith

by ChatoyantPenumbra



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Canon Universe, Domestic, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, ultimately fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 13:11:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16219739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChatoyantPenumbra/pseuds/ChatoyantPenumbra
Summary: Faith—it’s just one little word, but to Fudo Yusei and Izayoi Aki, it means absolutely everything.





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akiizayoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akiizayoi/gifts).



> It's about damn time I finally published some faithshipping around these parts.
> 
> Ultimately, this is written for my Aki. Happy anniversary babe. I love you.

Faith.

 

It’s just one little word, but to Fudo Yusei and Izayoi Aki, it means absolutely everything.

 

Things don’t start easily between them. The way the world brings them together, they’re two fated people, both burning with passion so great that when they finally meet, everything burns along with them right to the ground. Masked, Aki is violent and uncontrollable, a flame left to scorch with the power of wildfire sweeping through an endless field and consuming, consuming, _consuming_ everything in her path. She is the herald of destruction, while Yusei’s passion is like that of Dragonfire, unrelenting, unsubmissive, persevering through all opposing forces.

 

When their decks meet for the first time, Neo Domino City and all who dwell within her borders are shaken to their very core through the foundations of the stadium in which the two battle.

 

Yusei has faith—faith that she will see the error of her ways, that she will take a chance to trust him like he wants, that she can turn from her vehement hatred of the world, even as she flogs him with vines that feel realer than anything he’s been struck with before on the streets of Satellite. The crowd boos at them both; Aki is a witch and Yusei is trash that managed to escape the dump. They are both hated.

 

Aki’s mask cracks as the Marks on their forearms burn bright crimson.

 

Yusei has faith.

 

Aki doesn’t.

 

The next time they duel, Yusei’s fingers are still wet with her tears. She wakes from her coma and it’s apparent that many things still have not changed in her heart. But her parents have faith, faith enough in Yusei that they go so far as to seek him out in the depths of Satellite as he recuperates from his deadly match with Kiryu.

 

Yusei bears new scars. When Aki cries in anger he can feel the still-healing tissue singe along with the long-since healed scars inflicted by her choler, physical parallels to her pain that takes no somatic form. And when her father is driven to protect the very man he sent to save his daughter, Yusei watches her shatter into innumerable shards, overcoming the spell of rage that her soul has fabricated for the sole purpose of shutting everyone out to protect itself.

 

Faith delivers.

 

With a smile on her face, she tells him to end it.

 

Finally, she places her faith in him.

 

Then the Heart of the Cards speaks for itself, and he does as she asks.

 

Months, years pass. Through trial and tribulation, the Dark Signers are defeated, Iliaster’s line is destroyed along with Z-One and Aporia, and the apocalypse of the Ark Cradle is averted.

 

Faith stands with them in the darkness of the garage, the last night Fudo Yusei still retains all of his friends in Neo Domino in their youth. Their hands clasped together, he experiences the warmth of her hands like that of a fire on a cold night—her flame at last draws him in, keeps him warm, comfortable, happy.

 

Their lips meet with a tenderness neither of them could have even fathomed before that moment, and the faith, the love, the leagues of trust that had been slowly building between them over time fill their breath with a shuddering reverence as they lean their foreheads together, savoring the simplicity and euphoric catharsis of the moment before it fades to the wind with her departure.

 

But even as Yusei looks out over the city’s skyline later, the faith remains, sits with him in the pit of his heart, unrelenting, untainted. As much as it hurts him to have to let her go—let them **_all_ ** go—he trusts the voice within that says one day, no matter how far in the future it is, they will return.

 

Faith sustains him as he toils day in, day out, dedicating himself to Fortune like he dedicated himself to his deck and his D-Wheel for what seems like ages.

 

He works.

 

And he works.

 

And he works.

 

And one day, she shows up unannounced, to the same old garage beneath Poppo Time, to the same old Yusei drinking the same old coffee and working on the same old D-Wheel—though perhaps shinier, more updated, and much more efficient, even without Bruno there to brainstorm with him. The years that have passed pepper a faint shadow on his squarer jaw, the scratch audible as he runs his hands along his cheeks and through his hair every morning when he wakes.

 

Soon enough, its her soft hands that elicit the friction of his five o’clock shadow every time she pulls him down for a kiss, her fingers that cling in his thick raven locks as the mattress complains in a staccato of a one-two beat, her lips that muffle the grunts of his exertion and the gasps of her acceptance as their skin careens together. Her legs tremble in their cage around his hips and they fall together.

 

Faith is what remains in the afterglow, glistening in the faint sweat that tacks their skin; the shift of their bodies in the sheets with the quiet reverent whispers of _I love you_ s; it’s the contented sighs, nosed into the neck of the other; the arms tangled around waists and hips and the tips of fingers ghosting patterns and constellations of the powers that brought them together. In the morning, faith is in the pot of coffee that automatically brews at 7 a.m. every morning instead of the 5 a.m. setting Yusei had it on before Aki insisted that he _actually sleep in_ for a change.

 

One morning, the coffee goes ignored. With her lithe back to his chest, Yusei traces where her Mark of the Dragon used to be, nothing but normal skin now, as his equally normal forearm rests against hers. Golden-orange sunlight drifts onto the corner of the bed, illuminating the room further as their white comforter diffuses the light in all directions, and she twists in his hold to kiss him again, fully on the lips. Her hand reaches for his, clutching it to her chest just like that night in the garage, so many years ago. Two rings glisten from the nightstand in the muted light, well-worn with time and full of character.

 

Faith is here.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know how you guys liked this!


End file.
